words stephanie wu

Looking around at the enormous orb of a theatre - so fantastically rounded, crimson and plush that it seems impossible for anyone to be injured, even falling from its 88ft proscenium – that encases Zaia, Cirque du Soleil’s permanent show at the Venetian, it’s not surprising that the majority of the audience rushed to the show space a good fifteen minutes before the lights went down. And if the view wasn’t enough to keep them engrossed, there was also a slapstick, saggy-trousered clown duet, fumbling with maps and VIP seaters, to amuse viewers before the show.

Cut the lights, cue the first bombastic chords and urban skyscraper set, and the clowns scurry off, hunch-backed and fearful – which one can’t help but take as a sly display of Cirque’s oft-proclaimed pride at reinventing the average clown-and-elephant circus.

Thus starts Cirque’s first Asian resident show, which follows the loose story of a girl called Zaia who journeys from earth to outer space and picks up a bit of ‘self-knowledge’ along the way. Of course, the risk with the travel narrative is that it easily slips into a frame structure where ‘exploration’ becomes a euphemism for parading a piecemeal series of acrobatic acts before the audience. And the show does display symptoms of this periodically, particularly in scenes where Zaia turns from voyager to voyeur, hovering in the back of the theatre to passively observe the acts as an audience member while stage performances transition from heavily percussive fire twirlers, to the arctic yoga duet’s music-box sonata, to gymnasts gyrating suspended by ropes.

Despite the momentary lapses in coherence between the story arc and the actual acts on stage, the symbolism and story laced into each of the Cirque show’s acts is notably unique. The first scene, for instance, features dancers of various regions and styles – from break-dance, to tango, to tap - entirely unified in rhythm by the bombastic soundtrack. This scene, right after a clown had pointed to a map and exclaimed in a Mickey-Mouse tone, “Macau!” (the only real word to be heard throughout the show) seems carefully placed to emphasize Zaia’s cosmopolitanism.

Balancing the cerebral symbolism are acts that evoke immediate emotional responses. Such is the case when Zaia encounters her space soul-mate, decked out in sparkling spandex with a face fully encased in icy blue make-up. Swinging from his ‘n’ her pairs of dangling rope, the couple makes multiple attempts to float toward each other in midair, only to get asymptotically closer and drift apart. The courtship is so prolonged that the viewer is pulled along a heated procession of yearning, frustration and, finally, release.
At the least, the emotionally and intellectually taxing bits embedded within the show’s general fairy-tale aesthetic (i.e., polar bears dangling from hot-air balloons and whimsical big-wheel hover bikes) and perilous acts (live fire or a four pronged see-saw/human-catapult) reveal the thoughtfulness behind the performance and prevent Zaia from sliding into monotony, a risk that not even the most high-budget, supremely intellectualized or technically perfected show escapes.

Nonetheless, given the show’s lack of dialogue (even its song lyrics are sung in a made up language), clear surround-sound musicality and physical intensity, the thrust of Zaia’s appeal is its ability to evoke raw, visceral excitement. And if this is the standard by which potential audience members will decide the fate of the long-term performance, I – having sat in the very last row, directly left of the sound booth, and thus able to hear the somewhat annoying technical cues even more clearly than I could see the sinews of the performers’ muscles – will make a suggestion. If you’re flirting with the idea of visiting Zaia, do it with the same intensity that show’s executives had when they charged into Macau with an appetite for bedazzlement and a budget of more than US$150 million: shill out for the MOP$588 seats, if not more.

Cirque du Soleil’s Zaia, which had its soft-opening on July 26, is now playing at the Venetian. The hard opening takes place on August 28. Ticket prices range from MOP$1288 to MOP$388. Visit www.venetianmacaotickets.com for a detailed schedule and booking.